Saturday, June 30, 2007

Coach Mom & I attended the USWNT game against Brazil last Saturday and found that our "Row Y" seats were in the front row. That's our flag hanging behind Kristine Lilly who scored her fabulous free kick goal right in front of us. (The two moron men who knew nothing about soccer thought the Brazil goalie "should have had that one". Watch the video, below, and see how wrong they were.) Wambach's goal was also a beauty. The team looks very strong. Those gold uniforms weren't as bad as I thought they'd be. But they're not a US uniform. Red, white, and blue, people.

Lilly, in her record 327th international game, scored her 123rd goal for the national team. The 35-year-old player in her 20th year on the squad sent a left-footed free kick from the corner of the box that soared into the far upper corner of the net over goalkeeper Andrea. The shot almost certainly would have beaten any male keeper, too.

Anucha Browne Sander's lawyers filed her response to the defendant's motion to dismiss her case (routine in civil cases) and those papers were unsealed by the court yesterday. This case remains a doozy. Browne Sanders attorneys say Isiah Thomas told a cheerleader to go to the referees' lockerroom and "make them happy"; that guard Stephon Marbury had sex with a Garden employee, who said she felt she could not say no because of who he was; and that Stephon Marbury called Browne Sanders a "black bitch". He admits calling her a bitch.

I think it's interesting how Browne Sanders attorneys' portray Isiah Thomas telling the cheerleader to go to the refs lockerroom and "make them happy". The cheerleader interpreted the statement as "go in there and flirt with them." I think you could just as easily presume that he meant, go in there and have sex with them. I wonder if they will argue it that way, or stick with the cheerleader's interpretation.

MSG is going to call Browne Sanders a liar because she filed false tax returns. When MSG asked for her tax returns in discovery, her lawyers must have discovered her two major falsehoods. One, she wrote off expenses on a consulting business. Either the consulting business did not exist, or it was prohibited by her MSG contract and would have voided the contract. Whichever it was, her lawyers filed corrected tax returns retracting the deductions and paying the taxes. They also corrected her claim of charitable deductions that she hadn't made. Essentially, she cheated on her taxes.

I ran into this problem a lot in civil cases. People don't realize that when you file a lawsuit, you open up your life to examination. And nobody like paying their hard-earned money to the government. My clients tended to be more working class, so the big problem I ran into was clients who had worked under the table. I would say to them, if you want the court system to enforce the law, you have to expect to comply with the law in all respects. People of means don't work under the table, but they have their own way of cheating the government. And open themselves up to the accusation of being liars, because essentially they lied to the government on their tax returns.

Politicians do this too. The richest man running for President right now is the Mittwit, Mitt Romney. In the three years before he decided to run for Massachusetts governor, he took a homestead exemption on his taxes for his home in Utah. It saved him $148,800 on his taxes. A multi-millionaire lied on his taxes to save $54,600 a year. He blamed it on his tax preparer, too, and the voters of Massachusetts forgave him. We'll see whether this really hurts Browne Sanders at trial.

* Thomas allegedly urged Knicks cheerleader Petra Pope to cozy up to the refs before a game against the Nets in 2004.

"What she told me was that Isiah asked her to go into the referees' locker room and make them happy," Browne Sanders testified. "I asked her to tell me what that meant and she said, 'Well, he wanted me to flirt with the referees.'"

She said Pope told her she reluctantly did as she was asked.

* In November 2005 a member of Browne Sanders' staff told her and another female Garden executive that she had sex with Marbury in a car after a boozed-filled night at a "gentleman's club."

The woman said Marbury textmessaged her a few day later saying, "I want some more of that," according to court documents.

The woman told her bosses the sex was consensual. But she also said "she did not believe she could say no because of who Marbury is," according to the court documents.

* Browne Sanders claims Marbury called her a "black b----" after she complained that the star guard's cousin - who also was employed by the Knicks - had been making graphic sexual comments to her staff.

But Knicks brass said in a statement that the suit filed by the team's former senior vice president for marketing and business operations was "riddled with fabrications."

[]

At one point the Garden was ready to make the case go away with cash, according to court papers. But when Browne Sanders' lawyers asked for $6million in 2005, Garden Chairman Jim Dolan called it "ridiculous" and nixed the payout, the papers said.

Earlier that year, Browne Sanders was given a $75,000 raise and her annual salary jumped to $250,000. She said she was told she was doing a terrific job and, with the Garden's backing, was named to the Sports Business Journal's list of top professionals.

In a statement, an MSG spokesman said, "This lawsuit, just like Anucha's four years of phony tax returns, is riddled with fabrications from a fired and disgruntled former employee who was let go for poor performance and manipulating subordinates for personal gain."

"The public should know and the jury will learn that Anucha will make up stories and twist facts to pursue her real goal: money," the spokesman said.

A lawyer for Sanders called MSG's statement "a desperate attempt to mislead the public."

The documents released yesterday also show that Sanders, whose salary reached $300,000, had cashed in on nearly $80,000 in bogus tax deductions while she was on the team.

She scurried to cover her tracks last year by filing new tax returns for 2003 and 2004 - but only after a federal judge in her sex-harassment suit ordered her to share copies with MSG.

In her original tax forms, Sanders claimed she ran a "direct marketing" business out of her home from 2001 to 2004 - an unauthorized moonlighting gig that would have violated her contract with the Knicks.

Sanders wrote off nearly $20,000 in annual travel, meals and other expenses for a business she now claims she never operated - blaming her former tax preparer for the alleged fraud, which also involved padding her contributions to charity by tens of thousands of dollars a year.

Sanders has accused the married coach Isiah Thomas of repeatedly propositioning her for sex, then calling her a "bitch" and "ho" when she rejected his advances.

35 (Opening Day, several at Fenway Park in the 1980s, the one I recall best was sitting the bleachers freezing. When Lee Smith made his debut as the Red Sox reliever, we all stood up and bowed in awe. And to get warm.)

36 (Marathon Monday is a tradition, I've attended most every year since 1976 when I've been in town. Most memorable was 1983 when Joan Benoit Samuelson smashed the women's world record by minutes, not seconds),

42 (NBA game courtside, well almost courtside. I sat in the third row for a Lakers-Celtics game at Boston Garden, right behind the Lakers bench, in 1983. Wow.),

73 (The Beanpot! 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, and a few other years. Most memorable has to be the night of the Blizzard of '78 when we stayed to the end of the 12-5 pasting by BU and had to stay overnight in the scuzzy Garden as the subways shut down because of the storm. Walked home through two feet of snow from Kenmore Station the next day. Where have you gone, Joe Mullen?),

84 (Bay to Breakers race: 1981, the year I live San Francisco),

91 (Little League games: started watching my brother, then my sister who was the first girl allowed to play Little League in my town (other parents heckled her); and many of my friend's kids.).

The list omits the NCAA Women's Basketball Final Four. The final is sometimes a letdown, but you go to both the semis and the final and there's always at least one barn-burner in there. I'll never forget UConn-Tennessee (1995, the first of UConn's undefeated seasons) and Maryland-Duke (2006).

Actually, this list is pretty devoid of women's events. I'd certainly include the women's World Cup on my list.

Today, the headline would read "Supreme Court Used to Ban Segregation in Public Schools"

When I wrote "Supreme Court Overturns Brown v. Board of Education" yesterday, I knew that technically that wasn't true. The decision only guts Brown. That's the practical effect. Segregation is de facto OK under the new ruling. So I was overstating the case, just a tad.

But I knew I was on to something when I read this headline in the Wall Street Journal today: Race and the Roberts Court: Brown v. Board of Education has not been overturned. If the cretins writing editorials for the Journal felt the need to write that piece with that headline, you know that the opposite is true. (It's like Bush talking about progress in Iraq. Every time he opens his mouth, you know he's lying.)

And I'd like to pat myself on the back, because I saw this coming two years ago when I wrote this:

Ann and Mitt Romney with a station wagon they called the ''white whale.'' (Romney Family Photo)

That's the car they strapped the dog's carrier onto.

And I thought I hated the Mittwit before. The Boston Globe has run a multi-part series profiling our carefully coifed, multiple choice Mittwit. Part Four of the series started out with what he and his family seemed to think was a cute story that showed how clever he is; what the story really shows is a cold-hearted cruel man.

He strapped their dog to the roof of the car for a 12-hour trip.

Repeat, he strapped their dog to the roof of the car for a 12-hour trip.

The dog, understandably, freaked out and crapped all over the car.

Romney's reaction? He pulled into a garage and hosed the dog and car down. Although the story doesn't say this, presumably he continued on the trip with the dog still strapped to the roof; only now the dog is cold and wet.

What a sicko. I don't even like dogs and I can't imagine doing something like that to a family pet. Another reason why the Mittwit is not fit to be President. Hell, he's not fit to be dogcatcher.

Here's the Globe story:

Before beginning the drive, Mitt Romney put Seamus, the family's hulking Irish setter, in a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon's roof rack. He'd built a windshield for the carrier, to make the ride more comfortable for the dog.

Then Romney put his boys on notice: He would be making predetermined stops for gas, and that was it.

As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. ''Dad!'' he yelled. ''Gross!'' A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who'd been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.

Click on the full US map to see what countries or country your state equals in the production of greenhouse gases.

The map is from The Sightline Institute. I'd like to find out what the population comparison between Massachusetts and Algeria is, but they have it on a Microsoft Excel file, and I don't have half an hour to give Microsoft a bunch of personal information for them to lose just to download a free trial.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

New York Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens adjusts his hat during the sixth inning of a baseball game against the Baltimore Orioles Wednesday, June 27, 2007 in Baltimore. Clemens allowed four runs in the inning. (AP Photo/Gail Burton)

Segregation is back. Today the Supreme Court ruled that cities cannot address segregation within their school systems by taking race into account in assigning students to schools. Here's the opinion (pdf file, 185 pages)

In other words, separate is equal. Again.

Chief Injustice Roberts says in his opinion that he's not overturning Brown. Right.

These cases consider the longstanding efforts of two local school boards to integrate their public schools. The school board plans before us resemble many others adopted in the last 50 years by primary and secondary schools throughout the Nation. All of those plans represent local efforts to bring about the kind of racially integrated education that Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954), long ago promised -- efforts that this Court has repeatedly required, permitted, and encouraged local authorities to undertake. This Court has recognized that the public interests at stake in such cases are "compelling." We have approved of "narrowly tailored" plans that are no less race-conscious than the plans before us. And we have understood that the Constitution permits local communities to adopt desegregation plans even where it does not require them to do so.

The plurality pays inadequate attention to this law, to past opinions' rationales, their language, and the contexts in which they arise. As a result, it reverses course and reaches the wrong conclusion. In doing so, it distorts precedent, it misapplies the relevant constitutional principles, it announces legal rules that will obstruct efforts by state and local governments to deal effectively with the growing resegregation of public schools, it threatens to substitute for present calm a disruptive round of racerelated litigation, and it undermines Brown's promise of integrated primary and secondary education that local communities have sought to make a reality. This cannot be justified in the name of the Equal Protection Clause.

There is a cruel irony in The Chief Justice's reliance on our decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294 (1955). The first sentence in the concluding paragraph of his opinion states: "Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin." This sentence reminds me of Anatole France's observation: "[T]he majestic equality of the la[w], forbid[s] rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread." The Chief Justice fails to note that it was only black schoolchildren who were so ordered; indeed, the history books do not tell stories of white children struggling to attend black schools. In this and other ways, The Chief Justice rewrites the history of one of this Court's most important decisions....

The Court has changed significantly since it decided School Comm. of Boston in 1968. It was then more faithful to Brown and more respectful of our precedent than it is today. It is my firm conviction that no Member of the Court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today's decision.

Clyde Friend is unearthing a 15-million-year-old forest at his property in central Washington.(Mike Siegel / The Seattle Times)April 26, 2007

When I was a kid there was a dead tree in my nextdoor neighbor's backyard. It was rotting and had turned a beautiful shade of red. We called it "The Petrified Forest". I'm not sure how we came up with that name, but it was part of the landscape of my childhood, along with the treehouse, the hill, the sewer, the playhouse, the gooseberry bushes, the raspberry bushes, the white birch, and the weeping willow tree.

In today's LATimes, an article about a man who found a real petrified forest on his land in Washington.

I did it -- twice, to my shame, because I should have known after the first fiasco -- and both times got an ancient vehicle that was unsafe. First time I rented a trailer. The trailer wasn't ready on the day I asked for it, so I had to load it without assistance. It was over 21 years old and had bald tires. They told me it was the only one they had, and I had a schedule to keep. I blew a tire on the trailer on the Mass Pike and was lucky to be able to steer to the shoulder. Waited two hours for the tire to be replaced.

My second UHaul experience was with a 16 foot box truck. It was old but seemed fine until after I had loaded it and got onto the highway. At speeds over 55 MPH the passenger mirror wouldn't hold. So now I was in a truck with no rear view mirror on Route 95 in Maryland, and only a driver's mirror. I couldn't move into the left lane unless I passed a vehicle, then saw that same vehicle in my driver's mirror, and just hoped that no one had jumped in from the left. Most harrowing 9 hours of my life.

Now that I've read the LATimes series on UHaul, I see that I wasn't alone and that no one -- NO ONE -- should ever rent a UHaul. UHaul's policies kill.

They keep vehicles on the road for many years, long after their competitors take them off the road.

Among U-Haul's 100,000 trucks are many aging, high-mileage vehicles. Many have logged more than 100,000 miles. A recent court filing by U-Haul underscored the fleet's age: A company executive, referring only to the type of truck rented to Waldrip, said 4,595 of them were still on the road with 200,000 miles or more.

U-Haul has purchased about 38,000 new trucks over the last two years and has sold nearly as many older ones. But the company says it does not automatically retire vehicles at a fixed mileage or age.

Penske Truck Leasing, one of U-Haul's two major competitors, says that it replaces up to half its consumer rental fleet every year and that its oldest trucks are about 3 1/2 years old. Budget Truck Rental says the average age of its trucks is 2 to 2 1/2 years.

And they don't maintain them. They might as well call UHaul Rent-a-Truck-Wreck, because their equipment is hazardous to the health of their customers:

During a yearlong investigation, Times journalists surveyed more than 200 U-Haul trucks and trailers in California and other states and found that more than half were overdue for a company-mandated "safety certification," a check of brakes, tires and other parts typically required every 30 days.

The US Senate is trying to force states to adopt a National ID card: it's time to stop them. As part the debate on immigration legislation, the states will be forced to become REAL ID compliant.

States have strongly resisted this unfunded federal mandate – one that the Department of Homeland Security expects to cost more that $23 billion or almost $100 per license holder. Seventeen states have said 'no' to REAL ID – labeling it invasive, un-American, costly and an invitation to identity theft. They know it will force citizens to stand in long lines for licenses and endure numerous hassles looking for documents like birth certificates.

Now instead of listening to the states, the US Senate is trying to force them to comply through the back door. As part of immigration legislation being considered next week in the Senate, an employment verification system will be created that requires everyone to have a REAL ID in order to get a job.

There is still hope. There are two amendments that will remove REAL ID from the Senate immigration bill: take action now.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

A backhoe is used to remove debris from around a house in Colchester, N.Y., in the aftermath of the flooding Friday, June 22, 2007. Scores of searchers have been picking through the mounds of muddy rubble left in the flash flood's wake since Wednesday. (AP Photo/Don Minichino, Pool)

On Tuesday, SEMO pegged the damage to public property in the Delaware County town at about $5 million - far short of the number for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to step in. Now that number has climbed to "a little more than $20 million," Michalski said.That estimate for public property only refers to roads and bridges, debris removal and the emergency response, Michalski said.

SEMO has not yet assessed the damage to 150 homes because several roads have been impassable.

The damage to personal property along the 4-mile stretch north of Roscoe also has been staggering. The latest count has 33 homes, mobile homes and other structures destroyed. Another 12 homes have had major damage, and six with minor damage.

Numerous cars and motorcycles were also flattened, or swept downstream.

About 99 percent of the damage is in Delaware County, along County Road 7 (Route 206 in Sullivan County) and town roads off Spring Brook, in an area known as Cat Hollow. A tiny amount is in the neighboring Sullivan County Town of Rockland.

COLCHESTER _ The towns of Colchester and Andes remain under states of emergency because of significant flooding June 19, according to a news release Tuesday from the Delaware County Department of Emergency Services.

County Route 7, also known as Cat Hollow Road and state Route 206, will be closed between Roscoe and Downsville for an undetermined amount of time. Many of the roads near county Route 7 have been devastated and are closed.